Sen. Warren proposes truce with Trump

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is proposing that she and President-elect Donald Trump "put aside our differences" and work together to rebuild the American economy for working people.

A favorite of liberals, Warren has waged a bitter wars of words with Trump. She's called him a "pathetic coward" and worse on Twitter. He's nicknamed her "Pocahontas" — a reference to claims she made about being part Native American.

As recently as Monday, Trump called Warren a "terrible person," ''a terrible human being" and a "terrible senator."

In a statement Wednesday, Warren said the integrity of U.S. democracy is more important than an individual election. She said she hopes Trump will fulfill the role of president "with respect and concern for every single person in this country, no matter who they are."

McConnell says he won't revisit Trump comments

The Senate's top Republican isn't interested in rehashing contentious comments President-elect Donald Trump made about Hispanics during the campaign.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wouldn't say whether he thought Trump's remarks have caused lasting damage to the Republican Party with an important demographic group. Trump has called some Mexicans rapists and criminals and had claimed that a judge might be biased against him because of the judge's Mexican heritage.

Several months ago, McConnell publicly worried that Trump could push Hispanics from the party as Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater had done with blacks in the 1964 election.

McConnell said: "We should look forward and not backward and rehash and re-litigate the various debates we had both internally and with the Democrats over the past year."

Minnesota voter turnout down slightly

Minnesota's secretary of state says voter turnout was 74 percent for the general election, slightly lower than the past three presidential cycles.

Steve Simon says that will be among best in the nation when final national numbers come out.

But it's below the 76.4 percent of eligible voters in 2012 and the 78 percent in 2008 — two presidential cycles when Barack Obama's candidacy drove strong turnout. And it was nearly 79 percent in 2004.

Angst over the economy helps Trump flip Great Lakes states

A fractured, discontented electorate handed Donald Trump the presidency, allowing him to breach a region that Democrat Hillary Clinton was banking on in her bid for the presidency.

Key battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election for a generation. Ohio, Minnesota and Iowa have been part of winning Democratic maps, as well.

Trump outperformed expectations in all of them, moving most into the Republican column after President Barack Obama twice swept the region.

Exit polls and unofficial returns reflected deep racial, gender, economic and cultural divides nationally and across the Midwest and Great Lakes region, helping drive Trump's success. His soaring popularity among white voters without a college degree was essential to his capturing the Rust Belt.

"The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer," Trump said in his acceptance speech, alluding to his economic populist message that helped him shift much of the old industrial territory.

Trump's support Tuesday skewed older, more male and overwhelmingly white. His supporters said they were deeply dissatisfied with the federal government and eager for change, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for national media outlets.

Nationally, he won almost 7 out of 10 whites without college degrees.

Trump's surge in working-class regions was evident in places such as Mahoning County, Ohio. Obama won Mahoning, where organized labor still acts as a political force, by a 28-point margin in 2012. On Tuesday, Clinton won it by just 3 percentage points and fell short of Obama's vote total by more than 20,000.

Obama won nearby Belmont County, in the coal country along the Ohio River, in his first election. It shifted to Romney in 2012, and on Tuesday Trump won almost 70 percent of the vote.

Across Ohio, nearly half of all voters said international trade hurts the country's jobs situation, and two-thirds of them backed Trump. Two-thirds of the state's voters said the job situation in Ohio had deteriorated or remained static over the past four years, and three-quarters of them voted for Trump.

It was a pattern that repeated across the region.

Clinton did refashion an alliance similar to Obama's — women, young voters and nonwhites — but it wasn't large enough. Her support was concentrated in large cities, the Northeast and along the West Coast. But even in some key urban areas, Clinton fell short of Obama's benchmark.

The president won 420,000 votes in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County in 2012; Clinton won just 383,000.

The urban drop-off was a critical blow to Clinton, as Trump ran up resounding margins in small towns and rural areas, while adding victories in many suburbs.

Less clear in the results is just what voters want out of government. The same electorate that was so unhappy with government gave Obama a 53 percent approval rating and returned Republican majorities to Congress.

GOP control of Capitol Hill would, in conventional circumstances, be a luxury for a newly inaugurated Republican president. But Trump has clashed on personality and policy with the party's congressional leaders.

He has pledged to protect Social Security and Medicare. Those programs benefit voters age 65 and older, a cohort that Trump won with a narrow majority, but they are also targets of House Speaker Paul Ryan's long-term plans for a leaner federal budget.

Congressional Republicans also have opposed ambitious spending proposals for infrastructure that Trump outlined in his acceptance speech. Similar to what Obama and Clinton have endorsed, Trump promised to "put millions of people to work" by rebuilding "our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals."

The president-elect, meanwhile, did not mention at all his signature immigration proposals that defined much of his campaign: building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting millions of workers in the country illegally. Majorities of voters nationally said they oppose both ideas.

Facing a more deeply divided Legislature, Gov. Mark Dayton expressed hope the parties could find an answer to the state's health insurance cost woes but conceded 'peace' in state government was unlikely.

Clinton takes Minnesota in squeaker

Hillary Clinton has won Minnesota's presidential election, only narrowly winning a state that has been a Democratic lock for decades just minutes before delivering her concession speech to Donald Trump.

Clinton squeaked past Trump in Minnesota in a race called late Wednesday morning as Trump pressed her across the state.

Clinton was long the favorite to claim Minnesota's 10 electoral votes. Minnesota hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon nearly swept the country in his 1972 re-election.

The final margin was tiny despite that history and a far superior Democratic ground operation.

Associate Justice Hudson returning to Minn. Supreme Court

Voters have returned Associate Justice Natalie Hudson to the Minnesota Supreme Court in her first election test since Gov. Mark Dayton appointed her last year to fill the seat of retiring Justice Alan Page.

Hudson defeated family law attorney Michelle MacDonald in Tuesday's nonpartisan race. Her re-election leaves the state's highest court with a majority of justices appointed by the Democratic governor. Dayton has named four of the seven justices. He chose Hudson, who is African-American, to replace Page, the first black justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Hudson previously served 14 years on the Minnesota Court of Appeals. She also spent two years as St. Paul city attorney.

Donald Trump's victory sets off protests on both coasts

Demonstrators opposed to the election of Donald Trump smashed windows and set garbage bins on fire in downtown Oakland, California early Wednesday, as protesters swarmed streets across the country in response to the election. The protests elsewhere were generally peaceful.

In Oregon, dozens of people blocked traffic in downtown Portland and forced a delay for trains on two light rail lines. Media reports said the crowd grew to about 300 people, including some who sat in the middle of the road to block traffic. The crowd of anti-Trump protesters burned American flags and chanted "That's not my president."

In Pennsylvania, hundreds of University of Pittsburgh students marched through the streets, with some in the crowd calling for unity. The student-run campus newspaper, the Pitt News, tweeted about an event later Wednesday titled "Emergency Meeting: Let's Unite to Stop President Trump."

In Seattle, a group of about 100 protesters gathered in the Capital Hill neighborhood, blocked roads and set a trash bin on fire.

The Oakland protest grew to about 250 people by late Tuesday evening, according to police. Officer Marco Marquez said protesters damaged five businesses, breaking windows and spraying graffiti.

Police issued a citation for a vehicle code violation, but did not make any arrests.

A woman was struck by a car and severely injured when protesters got onto a highway early Wednesday morning, the California Highway Patrol said. Protesters vandalized the driver's SUV before officers intervened. The highway was closed for about 20 minutes.

Marquez said the department is fully staffed for the possibility of another protest Wednesday evening.

Oakland is a hotbed of violent protest in the San Francisco Bay Area. Protesters briefly shut down two major freeways, vandalized police cars and looted businesses two years ago when a Missouri grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson.

And nearly 80 people were arrested after a night in 2010 that saw rioters using metal bats to break store windows, setting fires and looting after a white transit police officer, Johannes Mehserle, was acquitted of murder and convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the slaying of Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man who was shot dead on a train platform the previous year.

Elsewhere in California, more than 1,000 students at Berkeley High School staged a walk-out and marched to the campus of UC Berkeley.

Police said at least 500 people swarmed on streets in and around UCLA, some shouting anti-Trump expletives and others chanting "Not my president!"

Smaller demonstrators were held at University of California campuses and neighborhoods in Irvine and Davis and at San Jose State.

Nebraska Sen. Sasse: America "demanded disruption" by electing Trump

In a statement Wednesday, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska congratulated Trump. Sasse said he and his family will pray that Trump "will lead wisely and faithfully keep his oath to a Constitution of limited government."

Sasse said he will now do everything he can to hold Trump to promises he made during the campaign. Among them are replacing President Barack Obama's health care law, nominating judges "who reject law-making by unelected courts," and fighting for ethics reform "that upends cronyism" and enacts term limits.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker on joining Trump administration

Gov. Scott Walker says Donald Trump and running mate Mike Pence have hinted over the past few months about inviting him to join the new administration in Washington. But Walker, speaking on WTMJ-AM Wednesday, says he told them he can best serve the Trump administration as the new chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Walker says he plans to finish out his term as governor and would run only for the office of governor if he decides to go for another term.

Walker says as chairman of the association he can help ensure the Republican governors, the House, the Senate and the president work together.

The governor was critical of Trump during the presidential campaign before endorsing him.

Rep. Emmer: 'This has been building for a long time'

Donald Trump helped drive a Republican train through Minnesota state and local politics Tuesday. That muscle helped the GOP keep the Minnesota House and take control of the state Senate. It made a couple of Minnesota U.S. House races extremely close.

World leaders weren't sure what to expect after a U.S. campaign in which Donald Trump upended foreign policy orthodoxy on numerous fronts, including the international movement to contain the spread of nuclear weapons.

Minnesota voters renew school district operating levy

Minneapolis voters overwhelmingly renewed a school district operating levy that supplies about 13 percent of the district's budget. Campaign manager Donald McFarland called the 83 percent "yes" vote an indication of confidence in new Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff.

Unofficial results also put three new members on the Minneapolis school board.

Statewide, several of the 10 districts looking for capital project money failed to pass their referendums.

Minnesota School Boards Association communications director Greg Abbott said a tax provision that would have reduced the impact of bond issues on farmers failed to get through last legislative session when Dayton vetoed the tax bill over a wording error.

Thirty-two school districts asked for operating money, according to the school boards association. Unofficial results had North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale voters passing an operating levy increase for the first time since 2002.

Legislative pay amendment

Minnesotans have voted by a massive margin to put an independent commission in charge of deciding whether state legislators should get a raise.

The change to the state's constitution will take some political pressure off legislators, who have long struggled with setting their own pay.

The last time legislators gave themselves a raise was in 1999. Since then, they've made a base pay $31,140 a year plus an allowance to help cover daily expenses during session.

State Sen. Kent Eken, DFL-Twin Valley, said he sponsored the change to the state's constitution because he thinks it's a conflict of interest for legislators to set their own salaries.

"The people of Minnesota didn't send us to St. Paul to argue about our pay should be," he said. "They sent us there to discuss and address their concerns."

A bipartisan 16-member commission will be appointed by the governor and the Minnesota Supreme Court's chief justice. Sitting or former legislators and their spouses will be barred from the commission. So will lobbyists, judges and state employees.

The group will meet every two years to decide whether legislative pay should go up, down or stay the same.

Some commission supporters say that the Legislature's low salary deters capable candidates who would like to run for office.

Sen. Torrey Westrom, R-Elbow, Lake said he thinks it's more likely legislators will get a raise now that the question is out of their hands — and that's one reason he opposed the amendment when it was wending its way through the Legislature.

He said it was a good for legislators to feel wary about giving themselves a raise.

"This citizen's panel will much [more quickly and easily] raise legislative salaries, which is what I argued on the Senate floor when I voted against it," he said. "It's been a very high standard."

Wisconsin election turnout near 20-year low

Turnout for the presidential election in Wisconsin appears to be a 20-year low.

Turnout in Tuesday's election was about 66 percent of the voting age population, based on unofficial results. Nearly all precincts were reporting Wednesday morning.

More than 2.9 million people voted in Wisconsin's Senate race, about 3,000 more than did in the presidential. The Wisconsin Elections Commission predicted about 3.1 million would cast ballots, which would have been roughly a 69 percent turnout.

If that number holds, it will be the lowest since 1996 when turnout was 58 percent. The past two presidential elections turnout was at or near 70 percent.

Democrats were hoping for a large turnout and the fact that it was lower than anticipated helps explain the victories of Donald Trump and incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

Trump aide says Clinton campaign 'outsmarted'

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says Hillary Clinton had more money and more people on the ground — but, Team Trump "outworked them, and frankly, we outsmarted and outclassed them in some cases."

Conway appeared on Fox News on Wednesday to analyze Donald Trump's stunning defeat of Clinton. Conway said the Republican billionaire "did a great job sealing the deal."

She said: "Take it to the bank — candidates matter. There's no substitute for a great candidate."

On CNN, Conway urged Trump's critics to "lay down their verbal firearms."

She said: "Give him a chance as your president-elect like we all did with President Obama and we all did with President Bill Clinton."

US healthcare stocks seen under pressure

Investors are bracing for a rough day for some health care stocks after the Republican victories in Tuesday's elections.

Mizuho Securities analyst Sheryl Skolnick says the Trump win and looming GOP control of Congress represent a worst-possible outcome for health care stocks. She says that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, something Trump has promised, would take away the expansion in several states of the government's Medicaid program for the poor, and that expansion helped both hospital and health insurance stocks.

Skolnick lowered her rating on several stocks, including the nation's hospital chain HCA Inc. and the largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., to "neutral" from "buy."